Write well because writing poorly gets you nowhere.

October 30, 2013

Lessons from Seth Godin's Linchpin - Lesson 2: Just Ship

Lesson #2 from Seth Godin's Linchpin (See Lesson 1 here) - The most important thing is to ship. Here's the excerpt:

The only purpose of starting is to finish, and whie the projects we do are never finished, they must ship. Shipping means hitting the publish button on your blog, showing a presentation to the sales team, answering the phone, selling the muffins, sending out your references. Shipping is the collision between your work and the outside world. The French refer to esprit d'escalier, the clever comeback that you think of a few minutes after the moment has passed. This is unshipped insight, and it doesn't count for much.

Shipping something out the door, doing it regularly, wthout hassle, emergency, or fear - this is a rare skill, something that meks you indispensable.

Seth goes on to explain the challenges and the reason, but what I really want to concentrate on is the how.

There's the saying, "Ready, fire, aim." In other words, just put it out there. To riff off Lesson 1, if you wait until it's perfect, you'll never ship.

I frequently use the following anecdote with my writing coaching clients: William Wordsworth HATED to publish his works because once he did, they were dead to him. He couldn't make any more edits or changes. If they weren't published, they were still alive. But if they weren't published, no one else could ever see them. They never shipped.

So, just put it out there, and clean up any mistakes as you go. Schedule the start of the new program, and I betcha you'll have it all figured out by day 1. Give the first class, and you can always re-record. Or you can re-purpose and re-use and do it again. And record it that time. You can always have a beta version.